Saturday Songs - Aug. 6

1. “Great Big Plans” – Jenny Owen Youngs

Oh. My. God. This song is fantastic. Youngs—who would seem only another Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter—has released this whale of a single off her sort-of-upcoming album. Produced by Greg Laswell, who also provides backing vocals, it reaches far beyond any kind of coffeehouse setting. Huge-sounding guitars and a lilting, wordless chorus, Youngs seems set for a world outside of the anti-folk and confessional songwriter scene.

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2. “Casimir Pulaski Day” – Sufjan Stevens

Long touted by myself as one of the saddest songs ever, Stevens pulls off a miraculously tragic story into a spare six minutes, starkly rendering a series of situations with ghostly details. But the deft songwriting here does more than confront the death of a friend; it confronts the bluntness and discomfort of a God who “takes and takes and takes.”

The trauma and doubt here are universal pleas for understanding—and even for a respite, a break for all the wonderful things in the song to happen fully and openly, instead of in fractured moments: “I remember at Michael’s house / in the living room when you kissed my neck / and I almost touched your blouse.” It’s the single happy verse in the entire song; the key here, however, is that the moment is openly a remembrance, not in the present compared to the rest of the lyrics.

That is the other fascinating aspect to the song—its placement in the present tense. This particular phrasing allows Stevens to construct a world in which the sickness and death of his friend is an ongoing process, relived every time the song plays. That probably explains why it’s so sad…

“All the glory that the Lord has made

and the complications when I see His face

in the morning in the window.

All the glory when He took our place,

but He took my shoulders and He shook my face

and He takes and He takes and He takes.”

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3. “Permanent” – Kenneth Pattengale & Joey Ryan (now the Milkcarton Kids)

Joey Ryan has long been a favorite of mine who writes some fantastic folk songs. As a live performer he is exceptional—even (though it seems strange to say this) sounding better in concert than on CD. As it so happens, this song is recorded from a live performance with friend Kenneth Pattengale. But coupling the song with Pattengale’s careful harmonies and his strong lead guitar makes for an even better song than simply Ryan playing solo.

Free

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4. “The Outdoor Type” – The Lemonheads

From The Lemonheads’ underrated album Car Button Cloth, this song is typical Evan Dando fare: a prickly narrator who would sooner be left in what I’d term “comfortable solitude” than commit to some real human interaction. Granted, my reading of this song suffers a little in light of my commit to being at least somewhat of an outdoor type. The song is centered on the lie told by Dando’s narrator, telling his outdoorsy girlfriend that he is an outdoor person to please her when he is actually not.

The question raised by this dilemma, however, is not whether that the narrator’s lie is worth the relationship, but whether it’s worth compromising the self in order to please a loved one (or potential loved one). Is the narrator endorsing a tactic of self-unfulfillment by lying about this?

Either way—unhelpful as this is from a critical perspective—I’m on the girlfriend’s side.

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5. “Junebug” – Robert Francis

You know it’s an ugly crowd when the applause for opener Robert Francis is lukewarm compared to the roars generated by Jason Mraz’s fedora’d presence. A personal favorite of mine.